The South Stands were rocking like the old days, the denizens on their feet throughout the Broncos’ winning scoring drive and final defensive stand.

When the win was complete, tight end Daniel Graham came running over to give his wristbands to a kid. In the front row, 10-year-old Mitchel Harwood reached out, but Graham ran to an older kid a few seats down. Undiscouraged, young Harwood continued to cheer the Broncos as they ran for the tunnel.

After most of the players were gone, a crush of photographers suddenly rolled toward the stands like an ocean wave. As it crested, Tim Tebow emerged, heading straight for the little boy in the eye-black tape and Broncos jersey. The boy’s eyes opened wide.

Tebow gave him a grin and handed him his white belt towel. Young Harwood couldn’t speak, his mouth frozen open in a capital “O,” a moment from a dream, too good to be true.

“I thought, ‘Yeah! Rock on!’ ” the young man said a few moments later, the awesomeness of his most unexpected Christmas present settling in.

It was just his second Broncos game, and his first win. “Now I have to bring him back,” said his grandmother, Julia Visconti.

“It’s an opportunity to run off the field and give a kid something that’s not necessarily that expensive or anything nice to me, but if it can help a kid and make a kid feel special and feel thankful . . . .

“I remember if I would have been sitting in the front row and (former University of Florida quarterback) Danny Wuerffel would have went by and done that to me, that would have been special. So if I could make some kid’s Christmas a little bit better and think about what is the true reason of Christmas and why we’re here, that’s definitely even more important than winning that game, for me, at least.”

This is the joy of being Tim Tebow, even more than the football, good as the football is on days like Sunday.

Truthfully, for much of the day it was painfully apparent to most everyone in the stadium that this was a meaningless game between two teams already eliminated from the playoff chase.

Fans booed the first-half play-calling. By the beginning of the third quarter, with the Broncos trailing 17-0, more empty seats dotted the grandstand than at the beginning of the first. But as the Broncos launched their comeback, the life returned, particularly in the South Stands, the heart and soul of Broncomania at the old Mile High Stadium.

In the final minutes of the fourth quarter, as Tebow engineered the winning touchdown drive, it could have been the old erector set. The noise rose and fell with the home team’s fortunes until the final crescendo, when Syd’Quan Thompson found himself beneath the deflection of a Matt Schaub pass and gathered it in to seal the deal.

“All I could hear was everybody yelling and my guys jumping on me and everything,” the rookie said.

His assignment on the play? The first tight end that came out. Texans coach Gary Kubiak would say afterward that Owen Daniels was wide open.

“I don’t know if he will score, but he is going for a while,” Kubiak said. “And the ball got tipped.”

Tebow’s legion of fans will tell you things like that just happen when he’s involved, some sort of magic or momentum or, for some of them, something more overtly theological.

“Love this stadium, love this town, love this crowd,” said Broncos defensive back Nate Jones. “We’re having a pretty tough year, crowd still comes out 68,000 deep, nice and loud in the fourth quarter, and we fed off of that. Tebow’s first win, Coach Studesville’s first win, coming back from behind. We couldn’t have written it any better.”

“Some people are made to make history; some people are made to follow,” Broncos linebacker Mario Haggan said of Tebow.

Houston’s defense is one of the worst in football. Victimizing it does not qualify you for Canton. But what Tebow did for the biosphere in that stadium Sunday was about more than football. He gave them a reason to believe. For one winter afternoon, he brought Broncomania back.

“He did good, and the team did good,” said young Mitchel Harwood, clutching his new prized possession. “Probably my best day ever.”

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